1997 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship
| Championship details | |
|---|---|
| Dates | 18 May - 14 September 1997 |
| Teams | 18 |
| All-Ireland champions | |
| Winning team | Clare (3rd win) |
| Captain | Anthony Daly |
| Manager | Ger Loughnane |
| All-Ireland Finalists | |
| Losing team | Tipperary |
| Captain | Conor Gleeson |
| Manager | Len Gaynor |
| Provincial champions | |
| Munster | Clare |
| Leinster | Wexford |
| Ulster | Down |
| Connacht | Galway |
| Championship statistics | |
| No. matches played | 19 |
| Top Scorer | D. J. Carey |
| Player of the Year | Jamesie O'Connor |
| All-Star Team | See here |
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← 1996
1998 →
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The All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship of 1997 (known for sponsorship reasons as the Guinness Hurling Championship 1997) was the 111th staging of Ireland's premier hurling competition. Clare won the championship, beating Tipperary 0-20 to 2-13 in the final at Croke Park, Dublin.
Since its inception in 1887 the championship had been played on a straight knock-out basis. If any team was defeated at any stage of the provincial or All-Ireland competitions it meant automatic elimination. This system was deemed the fairest as the All-Ireland champions would always be the team who won all of their games. There were some problems with this system. Over the years Galway had become the only credible hurling team in Connacht, thus giving them an automatic pass into the All-Ireland semi-finals every year. Similarly in Ulster there were many problems as hurling was much weaker and confined to a small few counties in the north-east of the province.
In 1995 the Hurling Development Committee began investigating a way of improving hurling in general and revamping the championship. Their proposals involved allowing the defeated Munster and Leinster finalists to re-enter the All-Ireland championship. While the two provincial final winners would automatically qualify for the All-Ireland semi-finals the two defeated provincial teams would join Galway and the Ulster champions in two play-off games or 'quarter-finals'. The two winners from these two games would then qualify for the semi-finals where they would be drawn against the Leinster and Munster champions. Repeat games would be avoided in the All-Ireland semi-final stage.
At the start of 1996 these proposals looked unlikely of being introduced, however, a whistle-stop tour undertaken by the committee's secretary Frank Murphy and Pat Daly, the GAA's Games Development Officer, had changed the position. In April 1996 the committee's proposals were accepted at the GAA's annual congress. Most counties supported the new proposals and motion 15 (a) was passed with more than a two-thirds majority.
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